Eight of the world’s youngest monarchs

Can you imagine being named King or Queen at only two months old? Here are the world's youngest monarchs stretching over the last couple of centuries:

Did you know Mary, Queen of Scots was just six days old when she became Queen? She’s not the only one in history (and presently) to take the throne at a very young age. While it might have been a distant dream for many of them, the following Royals got a whole lot more than they bargained for while they were very, very young.

While the rest of the world was busy paying attention to the marriage of Prince William and Kate Middleton in 2011, the Kingdom of Bhutan named their new queen at the age of 21. Now,this young queen is only 27 years old and considered to be the youngest reigning queen in the world at the moment. Travel and Leisure reports that she gained her title in 2011 when she married Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck, otherwise known as Bhutan’s “Dragon King”. Of his wife, the king told reporters: “I have been waiting for quite some time to get married. But it doesn’t matter when you get married as long as it is to the right person. I am certain I am married to the right person.”

At the age of three, Oyo became the youngest monarch in the world in 1995. He actually slid off the throne and ran away when the ceremony began (he was just three). Presently Oyo still rules the Tooro Kingdom, a south-western patch of Uganda.

3. Tsar Ivan VI of Russia

Ivan VI was crowned Tsar of Russia When he was two months old and unfortunately, it didn’t last long. Scarcely a year later his first cousin twice-removed, Elizabeth, seized the throne in a coup, ruling thereafter as Empress of Russia. He went on to spend 20 years in solitary confinement and was later murdered at the age of 23 by his jail guards.

4. Alfonso XIII of Spain

Alfonso was monarch from birth as his father, Alfonso XII, had died the previous year. His mother, Maria Christina of Austria, served as regent until he assumed full powers on his sixteenth birthday in 1902 from where he ruled until the proclamation of the Second Republic in 1931.

A post shared by Financial Times (@financialtimes) on Dec 2, 2017 at 11:04am PST

Tutankhamu is probably more famous for his death than anything else. According to Insider, he became the King of Egypt when he was 8 years old and reigned during 1333 BC. He died ten years later due to unknown reasons though. His intact tomb was discovered in 1922 in the Valley of the Kings which is said to be “one of history’s most important archaeological achievements”.

6. Henry VI

Henry VI is the youngest person ever to succeed the English throne. He was 9 months old when he succeeded his father as king of England in 1422. Two moths after that, he became France’s King as well (even though the latter didn’t last long). When he began ruling on his own, two rival royal houses began a power struggle for the throne: The Lancasters (Henry’s house) and the Yorks. The struggle became known as the War of Roses, and Henry’s side eventually lost. He was later imprisoned and murdered in the Tower of London at age 50.

7. Christina, Queen of Sweden

Christina reigned as Queen of Sweden from 1632 until her abdication in 1654. At the age of six, Christina succeeded her father on the throne upon his death at the Battle of Lützen, but began ruling when she reached the age of 18. She is considered to be one of the most educated woman of the 1600’s. Her father apparently raised her as a boy. According to History Today, her abdication at the age of twenty-seven stunned everyone and she went on to move to Rome and annoy the Pope, angle unsuccessfully for the throne of Poland, collect paintings and act as a munificent patron of music and the arts, support Scarlatti and Corelli and Giovanni Bernini, found the Academia dell’ Arcadia for literature and philosophy, and write her autobiography before dying in her Roman palace in 1689 at the age of sixty-two.

China’s last emperor was one of its youngest. In 1908, Puyi became emperor at two years old and the twelfth and final ruler of the Qing dynasty. When Puyi was only six years old, a revolution erupted and the Chinese dynasty crumbled.